


did you trade your heroes for ghosts?

by wolfchester



Series: love song for no one [2]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, F/M, and whines about stuff, bobbi listens and gives him advice, clint drinks too much and needs to stop binge-watching dog cops, hawkeyes being dumb about their feelings for each other, katie is easily swayed by emotional letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1778944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchester/pseuds/wolfchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same ground. And how we found the same old fears. </p><p>Wish you were here.</p><p> </p><p>(kate and clint miss each other, but neither of them will admit it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	did you trade your heroes for ghosts?

**Author's Note:**

> clint acts like a five-year-old child in this. sorry not sorry. #blameitonthealcohol #howdoesbobbidoit #whenwillkategetback #clintisamess
> 
> (part 2 of the 'love song for no one' series)

Bobbi finds him on his couch after a particularly tough mission. He's got a broken arm in a makeshift sling, because it's 3am and even though the hospital is probably still open, all Clint wants to do is crash at his apartment and watch the late-night reruns of Dog Cops.

Although it’s not the same without Katie to keep him warm.

This is precisely why he’s already had three beers and is onto his fourth. It’s kind of lukewarm, but he doesn’t care. Hasn’t cared about anything for a while, now. Not since Kate left (and took his frickin’ _dog_ , too).

It’s pretty pathetic, if you ask him. Acting like a complete _idiot_ because of some girl--well, you know, Kate’s not _exactly_ ‘some girl’. Like, where on the street would you find a 19-year-old who’s practically a superhero and a _goddess_ with a bow and arrow, and makes the best pancakes you’ve ever eaten? Exactly his point. Which is how he justifies his current state--he’s acting like an idiot over this girl because he _needs_ her--needs her to make his pancakes and watch his back and ice up his sore shoulders--not because he _wants_ her. No, no, no. He doesn’t see Katie-Kate in that way. At all. Okay? Nope. He doesn’t think about her hair. Doesn’t think about her legs and her collarbones and her smooth skin that looks like it would be so soft to--

Nope. He’s said it once and he’ll say it again. _He does not want to sleep with his partner._ Not at all.

So why’s Bobbi making such a big deal out of this?

She’s sitting on the edge of the couch, holding a cup of coffee that she brewed herself (it tastes like shit because Clint’s coffeemaker is from like, the seventies) and rolling her eyes at the slightly-drunk 33-year-old’s idiocy.

"Clint, honey, I know you. And I know that you don't fall in love easy-"

"Hey! Who said I was _in love_ with her?"

"-but I see the way you look at Kate, and the way your eyes light up when you talk about her. Look at you, darling. You're a mess! You're lying on a couch littered with takeaway noodle boxes and two-day-old pizza crusts, cradling a broken arm and drinking your fourth beer. _This morning_. And the girl's only been gone for two months!" Bobbi sighs, rubbing her fingers against her temple like she's got a splitting headache brought on by her ex-husband's stupidity. "You're an idiot. But I do have an idea of why she likes you, because I fell for the Barton charm once upon a time-"

" _Yeah_ , you did!" Clint says, a shit-eating grin upon his face.

Bobbi rolls her eyes. "Clint, would you let me talk for a moment?"

He shrugs, and Bobbi takes it as a sign to continue. "As I was _saying_ , Barton, you do have this sort of…reformed-carnie-and-thief-from-the-midwest-who-doesn’t-wash-his-shirts-very-often kind of charm that, well--it _seems_ to work. And maybe Kate’s fallen for that, and maybe she hasn’t. Either way, I know _you’ve_ fallen for her, and I know you gotta do something about that.”

Clint groans and shifts his position so he’s sitting upright and facing his ex-wife-turned-relationship-counsellor. “What am I supposed to do, Bobbi?”

Bobbi grins quietly--it’s as much of a confession as she’s likely to get from Clint.

“I’ve only met Kate two or three times, but from what I see, she’s not the kind of girl to need a knight in shining armour to come and rescue her. I say you wait it out. If she loves you back, she’ll come home. If not, then, well, you’ll have to find something else to do rather than sit here like a homeless person and forget to shower every day.”

Clint frowns and takes a sip of his beer. “I was homeless, once. You know there was this one time when--”

“--And it’s a great story, Clint, but you can tell me-- _again_ \--some other time. Right now, we gotta figure out how to..to _fix_ you.”

“Having Katie back to make me pancakes would fix me,” he grumbles.

“God, you’re such a _child_ , Barton! Maybe that’s why you’re attracted to girls ten years younger than you!”

“ _Bobbi_ , you’re not helping!” He whines, lying back down on the couch again. “I don’t know what to do. What if she never comes back and I never get to tell her how I feel?” He’s sounding like a frickin’ teenage girl but he finds he doesn’t care. Maybe it’s the alcohol getting to him.

“Write her a letter.”

“What?”

“Write her a letter,” Bobbi shrugs. “Girls love that kind of stuff. If you’d written me cute little letters when you were away on long-term missions--I’m not saying that our marriage would have stayed together, _but_ \--” she pauses, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

Clint huffs and throws a piece of pizza crust at her. “Our marriage broke up because you frickin’ _died_ , Bobbi. And what if she doesn’t like letters? What if she hates me and never comes back?”

“Well, she might not come back either way. So what have you got to lose?”

He mulls this over for a second. Finishes off the bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Swallows, blinks.

“Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

Bobbi leans over and kisses her ex-husband on the forehead. “That’s my boy.”

“Don’t patronize me,” he mumbles, furrowing his brows. “I’m older than you by two years.”

“Baby.” She rolls her eyes then stands up and makes for the door. “I’ll come over tomorrow and drive you down to the hospital to get that arm checked out. That letter better be written by then, or I’ll break your other arm.”

He winces. “Yeah, yeah. Now get your blonde ass out the door and let me letter-write in peace.”

Clint spends the next three hours writing with a stubby pencil and a scrap piece of paper until the sun comes up. He doesn’t ever have any use for mailing things, so doesn’t own any kind of stationery. Instead, he takes a bill notice from his stack of “things-I-should-sort-out-but-can’t-be-bothered-to-sort-out” pile on his kitchen table and uses the envelope from that to package up his letter.

He can only hope that Kate won’t want to punch him _too_ many times in the face (or break his other arm, as Bobbi warned) after reading it.

And maybe, just maybe, she’ll want to come home.

 

* * *

 

Kate’s been in Los Angeles over two months now, and she’s loving it.

No grumpy old dude (okay, he’s not that old) telling her what she can and can’t do. No rules, no regulations, no wars to fight or monsters to shoot arrows at. No longer living off of her parents’ money and making her own with her private detective business.

The business is going _really_ well, by the way. She’s had like, three jobs over the past two weeks. Okay, so one was just helping this old lady at the library print out a copy of a letter her grandson had sent her, and she got paid $10 in return. But, hey--it’s money! And she’s doing just _fine_ , thank you very much. (Even if she had to start feeding the cat budget food instead of that fancy stuff she was supposed to.)

But then Kate gets a letter of her own in the mail one day that screws up all the good Los Angeles vibes she’s got going on.

It’s from Clint. And it’s confusing--much like the man himself. And it makes her homesick. Because even though she’s making a life for herself here--even though she has a technical home, and a cat and a dog, and a kind-of-job--it’s not really home. Home isn’t this trailer on the edge of the sea, or the penthouse apartment she shares with the Young Avengers, or her dad and stepmom's $5 million mansion.

Home is Bed-Stuy, in a tiny little apartment decorated with far too much purple than should be socially acceptable, where a grown-ass man who slings arrows for a job lives. Where the coffee is sludgy, the hot water in the shower only lasts 6 minutes tops, and the TV signal is fuzzy on a good day. _That’s_ home. And it’s why she has to go back.

Kate packs up her stuff and Lucky, gives the keys and the cat back to their owner, and books a flight to New York, Clint’s letter burning a hole in the pocket of her jeans.

 

**end**


End file.
